Admiring the View
by Joysweeper
Summary: An expansion on the first scene of "Truce at Bakura". The day after the second Death Star, Wedge Antilles is once again in mortal danger.


[A/N: An incident that Wedge Antilles experienced in Truce at Bakura came up in one of the X-Wing books. This fic is thanks to that.]

_His right hand twitched. He tightened it into a fist and tried to ignore it. In one of his few protracted zero-gravity experiences, he'd had to keep two components of the external triggering mechanism of a self-destruct device from coming together. He'd done so the simplest way possible: exiting his X- wing into hard vacuum, relying only on his flight suit's magcon field and a life-support tether to keep him alive, and jamming his hand in between the closing components._

_In the long minutes he'd waited, he'd been battered by conflicting thoughts. He'd resigned himself to dying, yet hoped rescue would come. His flight suit inadequate to the task of retaining his body heat, he'd begun to freeze, yet he'd waited there, marveling at the beauty of the starfields above the sanctuary moon of Endor._

_When rescue, in the form of Luke Skywalker, had come for him, he'd torn himself free of the mechanism and almost lost fingers doing it... and now those fingers became a bit twitchy whenever he found himself in zero gee for any length of time. The emotions returned, too. He could even taste the bacta they'd dunked him in to heal him after the ordeal. He tried to will the taste away and concentrate on his surroundings._

* * *

><p><strong><span>Admiring The View<span>**

"Control, I've got a response, but it's coded and I don't think it's anything like long enough to be the message. Patching it to you," the pilot said, glancing away from his sensor board and back at the messenger drone floating alongside his X-Wing. It seemed quiet, but his sensors said it was still active, engines still running even if they weren't going anywhere.

"We've got it, Captain." The very young Mon Cal officer acting as Control for this field of Alliance-controlled space – her seniors were probably still sleeping off the celebration from last night – clicked her tongue thoughtfully. "Hmm... This really can't be the message – I'll send it down to be decoded, if anyone else is awake right now."

After a pause, she said the two words no one wants to hear from someone in that position. "Uh oh."

"What?"

"That's not the message, it's a status report. The self-destruct cycle's been activated." Control didn't add _nice going_, though he could tell she wanted to. A lapse in professionalism might be ignored today, the first day of a galaxy that no longer contained Darth Vader or the Emperor, but she probably didn't feel comfortable being sarcastic to a man who had blown up a Death Star yesterday. "There are about four minutes left."

Wedge Antilles reached for the stick but didn't maneuver away just yet. "Control, what's the estimated range for the drone's self-destruct?" A long time ago, it felt like, he'd read up on these old messenger drones, and he thought he remembered reading that with those huge engines, they exploded magnificently.

And as she told him, he found that he'd been right. Wedge glanced again at his sensor board. The drone had dropped out of hyperspace right in the middle of the repairs field. Yesterday the Rebel Alliance's fleet had taken massive casualties, but not all of those had been _fatal_ casualties, and they'd captured a good number of still-serviceable Imperial ships. Like Grand Admiral Teshik's Star Destroyer _Eleemosynary_, drifting pacified and close enough to completely eclipse the planet that Endor revolved around. Everything that looked like it could be fixed at least to the point of leaving on its own power had been towed out here, dropped relatively close to each other. Crews, many of them with hangovers, were just starting work on them.

"Control, can all of our people clear the danger zone in time?"

"Checking, Captain." She neglected to click the transmission off; Wedge could hear her, a little more faintly, calling out to someone else on _Home One_'s deck. A moment later and he heard her voice again, noticeably more strained. "Captain – the crews of the _Daughter_, _Brota's Virtue_, and the _Stalwart_ are out patching their hulls, they can't clear the area-"

Wedge didn't swear; that would take time. "How long before they can?"

"It'll take the _Stalwart_ at least ten minutes," Control said. "_Daughter_ in seven, _Brota's Virtue_ in eight."

"Do you have a countercode to slow down or cancel the self-destruct?" While she checked, he opened up the private channel to his R2. "What's the ETA on that self-destruct?"

Two and a half minutes. Wedge looked at his sensor board, then out past his canopy at the frigate _Stalwart_. Its captain could fire its engines and get it out of there, but the people in vac suits, clinging to the outside of the hull, didn't have a chance. In a situation like that they were supposed to have short-range repulsor paks that could get them to the airlocks in far less than the ten minutes given. But the Rebellion was always short on supplies, and some of the safety regulations had to be waived.

"No countercode, Captain." Control hesitated. He could hear what must have been someone else murmuring, though he couldn't catch the words. As if being dictated to, she said, "I – Captain Antilles, I think we'll have to write off those crews as lost. _Stalwart_ too. Their engines are offline."

"Talk to _Eleemosynary_, see if they can get a tractor on _Stalwart_," Wedge said, thinking furiously. The Star Destroyer was the only thing close enough to possibly have the tractor power necessary. Between the debris, the other wounded ships, any damage it had taken during yesterday's battle, and the fact that it couldn't have more than a skeleton crew on duty yet, it might not be able to nab it in time. In fact, Wedge was willing to lay even odds that it couldn't.

But to him, as long as a ship was still intact, it wasn't beyond saving.

Saving the _Stalwart_'s crew meant his death. Almost certainly. But did that matter? He was a Corellian. Besides, yesterday he'd flown through the Empire's trap and into the heart of the Death Star. Had the chances been any less dire then?

He knew what he had to do. He'd studied these drones back in school, on Corellia. Wedge glanced at the timer on the dash. About a second had passed.

He checked his suit's integrity. It was good. Checked the power supply of his personal mag-con field. Topped up, same with the limited life-support built into his flight suit. Wedge had expected nothing less; he always took care of his equipment. Just in case, he opened up a panel under his seat and took out several meters of coiled hose, fixing one end to the port in his flight harness, the other to a similar port in his X-Wing's life support. Finally, he gave his astromech the order to match velocities and maintain the same position relative to the drone.

"Captain, they're working on it," Control said. "Get out of there before it blows!" Wedge nudged his X-Wing right up close against the drone, then shut the main power down, undid the restraints, and popped the canopy.

He felt the difference right away, the drop in air pressure, then temperature, the tingle and almost subliminal hum of the mag-con field lighting up, that lurch and the faintly nauseating sense of floating or falling as he passed into zero gravity. Control's voice got tinnier in his helmet as she asked what he was doing.

Wedge gripped the edge of his cockpit in both gloved hands, braced himself, and pushed off for the drone. "I'm buying them some time," he told Control, then grunted as he collided with the drone, grabbing the rungs built into its side, going hand-over-hand until he found the access panel and levered it open.

Just as he'd studied. The two electrite crystal leads, slowly bearing down on each other, the gap between them closing. There was only one thing he could do to stop them.

Before they could touch, before he could dread what he was doing, he had shoved his right hand between the leads.

They closed around it, dimpling his glove, one in the palm of his hand, the other against the back. For a moment there was no pain, just the sense of heat and pressure, and he dared to hope that those half-remembered studies were wrong. That that would be it, they would alternate pulling open and nudging together like the doors on a passenger turbolift waiting for the obstruction to get clear.

But they didn't, of course. Inexorably, a millimeter at a time, they drew together, pinching, and an ache started in the bones of his hand. The metacarpals, he remembered hazily. The ache was intensifying. If he remembered right, it was only going to get worse.

Wedge toggled his comm, keeping it open. "Control," he said tightly, "I'm manually blocking the leads here. As long as I'm here, it's not going to blow. Get those ships out of here." Looking past the rounded mass of the drone, he could see that the _Stalwart_'s crew was still scrambling madly for the hatch.

He could hear other voices over the comm before Control spoke again. "Captain Antilles – can you shut it down?"

The crystal leads ground slowly closer together, and he couldn't keep from inhaling sharply through his teeth. "N-negative, Control. These things are – they're really well made. Elegance. A hand blaster would take too – too long to burn through the plating." And with the way the crystals were faceted, the way they rocked and twisted a little when there was an obstruction – as he was finding now – jamming the blaster in instead of his hand wouldn't have worked for long.

"Keep l-looking-" Wedge closed his eyes as pain lanced up his wrist and arm. He forced himself to take a deep, slow breath. "Keep looking for a way to shut it down."

"Will do, Captain." Control sounded subdued. She probably knew as well as he that they weren't likely to find anything in time.

It was steadily getting colder, making the rest of his body ache, but he was sweating uselessly into his suit. The only parts of him that were warm were his chest, where his X-Wing's life support fed heated fresh air in and pumped it back when it was stale, and his hand.

Which was unfortunate. If the crystal leads hadn't been warm, this hand could have gone numb with the other one. Wedge flexed his left hand. It was slower to respond than usual. He couldn't feel it at all. Of course, his right hand-

He shook his head and watched beads of sweat flick out, spherical in zero gravity, and pass out of his mag-con field, drifting frozen out of view. Wedge didn't like being without gravity in the best of times. It always made him feel like he barely had any control. And this wasn't the best of times. His right hand was being crushed, he suspected that his glove was awash in blood, and his only hope was -

Wedge felt more than heard one of his bones fracture under the pressure. Light exploded in his eyes and fire spread instantly up his arm, making his back arch. Instinctively he tried to yank his hand away, his left hand rising to claw at his wrist. He forced himself to stop and clutched his forearm instead.

After an eternity of this, it ebbed a little. His vision returned, and faintly he heard Control talking frantically, though he couldn't quite understand what she was saying. His ears were ringing. Had he screamed? He couldn't remember.

The crystals rocked and twisted and bore down even harder, and another bone went. Someone cried out, a gasping half-choked sound, and it took him a moment to realize that it was him.

He'd been captured by Imperials more than once. Somehow they'd never tortured him – beaten him up a little, left him without water in a warm cell, started him en route to Kessel – but they'd never actually _tortured_ him. For the first time, Wedge wished that they had. He'd have a point of reference then, he could say _at least_ _I'm not there._

A little more of that now-familiar motion, and the taste of blood filled his mouth as he bit the inside of his cheek to try to keep from screaming. It was only a partial success.

It was so cold.

He was going to die out here. Curled around his broken hand, Wedge knew it. He was going to die here. What a way to go. Not twenty-four hours after the last Imperials had surrendered or retreated, and he was going to die alone, of exposure, with his hand trapped in a messenger drone.

His wandering eyes focused on the shape of the _Stalwart_, and he noticed that something had changed. It wasn't that it seemed to be moving – he knew that that was just perspective, since the drone was turning slowly. Was it – yes, the crew had gotten back inside, and no doubt someone with a tractor beam would be pulling it out of here.

It was worth it. He didn't want to die, he still hoped that someone could retrieve him – how, he didn't know – but… it was worth it. He couldn't imagine living, having allowed someone to die.

Wedge wondered abstractly whether it would hurt as much as this.

So cold. He let go of his forearm and sluggishly made a fist with his left hand, then opened his fingers, several times. He was trying to do it quickly, but the motions were slow and deliberate. Was he getting frostbite?

Something in his right hand twanged and twisted, and for a moment everything went away except the pain and the sensation of floating. When he could think again he forced his left hand into a fist and hammered the drone once with it, uselessly. It was so cold that he felt the impact only dimly.

Blinking was getting harder. That wasn't right, exactly. His eyes were willing to close, reluctant to open again. Wedge thought his eyelashes might be freezing together. He couldn't really feel his face anymore. Maybe his life support was shutting down. Maybe this was normal. He'd never been out in vacuum without a good rated pressure suit before, not for this long.

Pilots' suits were only rated for a few minutes out here; that was why he'd hooked the hose up. How long had he been out here? Wedge didn't know. Considering making the effort to ask Control – who was still talking, even if he wasn't making the effort to understand her – he let his eyes drift. And he saw them.

It was like he'd never seen the stars before.

They were beautiful. That was a clichéd phrase, yes, but it was true. Larger and brighter and much, much more numerous than in atmosphere. He tried to identify them and had to give up. So many stars. Different colors, too, some of them, white in the center with color showing at the edges, like the blade of a lightsaber.

He had to stop looking at them for a moment as the pain swelled again. Dimly, he was aware that inside of his glove there was probably a horrible pulped mess, a hundred bone splinters mixing in with what was left of the blood vessels and tendons and so on. He wondered if the skin was broken. Certainly he couldn't move his fingers.

Wedge looked back to the stars.

It was like there was no darkness. Every time he shifted his gaze to a darker spot, after a moment he either saw that it was something blocking his view – a ship, a bit of debris – or fainter, more distant stars appeared, including some that he couldn't see when he looked directly at them.

They burned on, brilliant and utterly indifferent to him, to what had so recently happened. Timeless. They would burn on, no matter what he or anyone did, until they had exhausted their fuel.

And around them, on hundreds of thousands of planets, billions of people were going about their lives. Many of them subject to or in some way under the Empire's influence, most of them not yet aware that the death blow had been struck. The Emperor was dead, Vader was dead, the Grand Admirals had died or captured or fled. It might not know it yet, but the Empire was dying.

And the Rebel Alliance, whatever they did now, could help its death along with or without a lone X-Wing jockey. If he lived, fantastic. If not, well, that was fine too. He'd had a good run. Frankly, he'd more than once thought that ever since Yavin – maybe before then, maybe ever since he'd been "lucky" enough to not be on the station when his parents died – he was living on borrowed time.

The pain swelled and ebbed again, and Wedge went back to contemplating the stars. Not even thinking about them, or barely. Just admiring their beauty.

Eventually he became aware that Control had been repeating the same thing, several times over, and forced himself to focus. It was harder than he'd have expected.

"-peat, Wedge, you're going to be okay. Rogue Leader's on his way. He's coming. Hold in there. Please acknowledge. Repeat, you'll be okay. Wedge, Rogue Leader-"

He tried to speak, to ask Control when she'd started calling him by his first name, but nothing came out. His throat was chilled and raw. Wedge swallowed hard and tried again.

"Acknowledged," he croaked. He sounded terrible. Trying to push past that, he went on to say, "Thought _I_ was Rogue Leader." He couldn't feel his lips.

"He's conscious," Control said excitedly to someone, maybe him. "Um, sorry Captain, but right now you're not, the Rogues are still under Luke Skywalker."

"Right," he rasped. The meaning of what she'd said before that slowly hit him. "Luke's coming?"

"He is. He didn't even stay to be briefed, he just took off, and he's on his way. If you can just hold in there-"

"Right," he said again. Luke…

"Stay awake, Wedge. We need you conscious," Control pleaded.

"'Ll try." If anyone could do it, it was Luke. Could even he, though? The part of Wedge that cared if he lived or died had gone numb a while back. Now it thawed, and the uncertainty was back with him. Hope flared, as painful in its way as what the leads were doing to him.

"Wedge, do you copy?" Luke's voice, young and anxious even past the way the comm flattened it. "Wedge, are you out there?"

During the celebration – had it only been last night? – Luke had seemed more distant and far older than he ever had before. Thinking about the future, no doubt. In a way, it was good to know that the farmboy was still in there.

Oh, right. He was supposed to answer. "Sorry," he said, his voice thick. "Almost out of range of my ship's pickup. You see, I've got to…" He felt it coming in time to brace for it. Maybe he was getting used to this. "I've got to keep these two crystals apart. It's a self-destruct of some sort."

"Crystals?" Luke sounded distracted.

"Electrite crystal leads," Wedge explained tiredly. "Leftovers from the old 'elegance' days. The mechanism's trying to push them together. Let 'em touch… poof. The whole fusion engine."

Luke whistled. "No, we don't want to blow that big of an engine."

"Right." He wasn't up to any more of a response. Wedge craned his neck a little, trying to see – yes, there. Luke's X-Wing, and an escort of three, four A-Wings. He wondered vaguely if he knew them. They held back.

"How long have you been out here, Wedge?"

"I don't know." He had to make more of an effort. Luke would worry if he didn't. "Doesn't matter. The view's terrific." He watched Luke's X-Wing come up to him, maneuvering to match the drone's slow tumble. He could see Luke's face now, at least those parts of it not covered by the helmet, and it was worried.

Wedge went for flippancy. "Sure could use another hand. What are you doing out here?"

"Enjoying the view." Luke was silent for a while. "Artoo, what's the reach on your manipulator arm? If I got in close enough, could you help him?"

Wedge could have smiled. Maybe he did; he couldn't feel his face. If an astromech still in its socket could do this, he would have gotten his to do so already. Luke was probably finding this out right about now.

Did the _Stalwart_ seem smaller now? It did. _Eleemosynary_, or someone else, must have started tractoring it. There didn't seem to be anything else close enough to be too damaged by the blast now, just the snubfighters. Good.

The crystals contracted again. When his eyes had cleared he was light-headed. _Force_ it hurt. Maybe he wasn't getting used to it after all.

A lightsaber blade, green around a white core, appeared besides him, and he blinked, not quite able to react further.

Luke's voice came back. "On my signal, jump free."

He was… going to use the lightsaber on the crystals? Wedge said the first thing that came to mind. "Luke, I'll lose fingers."

"Way free. You'll lose more than fingers if you stay there."

He had a point. There was another little twist. Trying to get his legs up to brace against the drone, Wedge managed, "Think you could Jedi me a little nerve blockage? This hurts like crazy."

"I'll try," Luke promised. "Show me the crystals. Look at them closely."

"Ho-kay," Wedge muttered, and leaned in. Behind him the lightsaber moved silently, illuminating the mechanism. He felt something pushing in gently behind his eyes. Luke? Had to be. His instinctive reaction was to push back – he really didn't need anyone else in his mind, thanks – but he didn't.

It was Luke. He trusted Luke.

His eyes moved a little, seemingly of their own volition, and he studied the crystal leads a little. Rather, he let Luke do that. The crystals clenched a little harder and his vision blurred.

The pressure sort of shifted in sympathy, and then there was a sort of twinge as Luke did… _something_ to Wedge's head. The pain faded. Now he was just cold.

"Got it," Luke grunted.

Now he was just cold, and his eyes kept drifting closer and closer to shut. "Got what?"

"The view. Jump on the count of three." The lightsaber dodged his body and moved closer in, hovering very near the panel. "One… Two… Three." There was a pause. "Jump, Wedge!"

Oh. Right. Wedge pushed off. It was a pathetic attempt, but he made it, and below him Luke's lightsaber flashed. One of the crystals came free and spun lazily, reflecting the lightsaber's glow from its facets.

"Ooh," Wedge crooned before his body spun him out of view. "Pretty." He clutched his right hand and couldn't feel it. It was over now, and at the moment he didn't terribly care what "it" was. His eyes closed. Vaguely he hoped that he hadn't pushed off hard enough to break the hose tethering him to his X-Wing... well, he couldn't worry about it now.

Off in the distance, he heard Luke saying, "Wedge, reel in!" and then, as he passed out, "Rogue Leader to _Home One_. Explosives disarmed. Request medical pickup. Now."


End file.
